IF EVERTONIANS have spent the summer dreaming of a ‘same again’ next season, Goodison head physio Mick Rathbone is praying there are no repeats.

While 2008/09 will go down as arguably the most successful of David Moyes’ seven years on Merseyside, for Rathbone it was without doubt the worst – four traumatic injuries to key players ensured there was not much reason for cheer in his office.

Having spent last summer nursing Tim Cahill, Leighton Baines, Mikel Arteta, Tony Hibbert and Andrew Johnson back to full fitness from serious ailments, Rathbone could have been forgiven for thinking that he would have nothing more serious to deal with than the odd hamstring tweak.

What followed, of course, was something all together different; from the moment Steven Pienaar went down with a broken toe, the affable Rathbone was snowed under as one lengthy lay-off followed another.

Ayegbeni Yakubu, Mikel Arteta, Victor Anichebe and Phil Jagielka all suffered injuries that ended their involvement and few understood their pain better than Rathbone.

“It’s a bit like painting the Forth bridge,” said Rathbone. “One guy will go back into training just in time to shatter the ankle of the guy he tackles and there is his replacement in the medical room.

“You can’t ever beat it but that’s the job; injuries will occur and they will occur more and more now the game is getting faster and the players are becoming stronger, so that side of the game is here to stay.

“Last year was something I’d never experienced in 15 years; you would normally expect one bad one a season but we had four – and that was on top of starting the season with four or five long-term absentees, too.

“But it’s the same everywhere else; to necessitate top performances on Saturday, you have to train the way you play and it’s tough. When I played, you could have basically got away with standing around during the week and then turned up for the weekend – that’s not the case now though.”